Happy Friday, Word Nerds! We’re now well and truly into summer and conference season has begun! In fact, Gabriela and Emily are attending Thrillerfest right now. In a few weeks, Sarah will be attending the Romance Writers of America Conference, and a week after that, Gabriela and I will be at Writers Digest. And this October, DIY MFA will be hosting its first conference–Writer Igniter Con!
This morning, I’d like to talk about a common feature at writing conferences–pitch sessions. These are a fantastic way to get face to face time with an agent or editor, pitch your book and get immediate feedback. It may be a request for pages or a rejection, but either way, it’s valuable information that will help you hone your book and your pitch. I’m such a big fan of pitch sessions that I didn’t think I could cover the full scope of it in one post, so I’ve broken it down into two. This week, I’m going to highlight the top five reasons you should take advantage of pitch sessions, and in a few weeks, I’ll be talking through five tips to make sure your pitch is perfect.
Five Reasons to Attend a Pitch Session
1) Creating a Pitch is Valuable to Your Writing Process
Kent Bridgeman has discussed this at some length in his marketing column, and I can’t agree enough: crafting a pitch is an important part of the writing process. In his seminal structure book, Save the Cat, Blake Snyder argues that you should develop a logline before you write a word. Not every writer likes to craft a pitch that early, but I do think it’s a valuable exercise at some point, whether it’s before you’ve begun, when you’re in the trenches or after you finish. I actually like to do all three, because I find that it helps me stay focused on the core of my story. A pitch boils your plot down to its essence: In V world, X character wants Y, and is thwarted by Z.
In a tyrannical future America, Katniss wants to protect her family, but to do so must survive a televised fight to the death.
Being able to boil your story down to these three points will help you as a writer to stay on track. It’s something you can refer back to if you ever feel like you’re getting off course.
2) It’s Also Valuable to Your Marketing Strategy
A fiction writer’s marketing strategy is rather straight-forward: you’re trying to sell your story. But doing that can be a lot harder than it seems. We’ve all been faced with the dreaded question: What’s your book about? Having a well-honed pitch gives you a ready answer, no matter who’s asking the question. The rest of a book’s marketing comes out of this, from the query letter to the copy on the back of the book. It starts with a pitch, so having one that’s strong is an absolute necessity.
3) Face Time With Editors and Agents is Priceless
Here’s the problem: there’s just no way to know if your pitch works until you try it out on people. You can practice on your family and friends, and often get good feedback. That’s doubly true with writing friends. But what could possibly be of more value than a real-time, face-to-face reaction from an expert in the industry? Agents and editors hear pitches all the time. Seeing what their reaction is to yours can be . . . well, terrifying, but also incredibly useful. Often, at pitch sessions, editors and agents will give feedback, letting you know what worked and what didn’t. And you can use that to make your pitch even stronger.
4) You Could Just Score a Book Deal
At most pitch conferences writers receive either feedback, a rejection, or a request for pages from an agent or editor. All three are valuable. Of course, the third is the outcome we’re all looking for. If an agent likes the pages, he might request more. This could lead to an offer of representation and a book deal. It truly does happen. The thing is, though, that the same is true of simply querying. You could “pitch” an agent through a query letter and end up on the same path. So while a book deal might be the end-goal, pitch fests aren’t the only path to it. I personally think the real value in a pitch session is in how it helps you to hone one of the most valuable tools in a writer’s arsenal: the pitch itself.
5) Pitch-Crafting is a Process
Jumping off that last point, no matter what the outcome of a pitch session, whether you’re getting a bajillion requests or none at all, being open and responsive to feedback will ultimately help you, your writing and your book. You’ll leave the pitch fest with a plan to make your pitch stronger. As writers, we are all going to be faced with the question: what are you writing about? The first questioner will be the book itself, asking “What the hell am I?” A writer has to be able to answer that question to craft a good story. And once the story is crafted (and usually while the writing is happening!), people will be asking the same question. Then agents. Then editors. Then the sales force at your publishing company. The marketers. The publicists. The book sellers. Then, ultimately, the readers. A pitch makes the journey from pitch session to the back cover of your book. Pitch sessions are another way that you can make yours as perfect as possible.
